[genwin]

I have a problem with a war on marijuana, or violating the Constitution during the war on drugs. But otherwise I don't have a problem with a war on meth or crack or other drugs that increase the odds that I'll be a victim of violent crime or robbery. (I'd punish simple users with rehab rather than prison.)

[pstuart]

No, no, no. Making them illegal makes more violent crime.

Let me put you in rehab for your coffee addiction or beer habit, ok?

[genwin]

Coffee addictions don't lead to more violent crime or robbery, as far as I know.

Does making meth and crack legal make less crime (violent or robbery) than if their usage was nil? I highly doubt it.

[pstuart]

80,000 deaths per year in the US attributed to alcohol: http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm

It's a dangerous drug. It makes people violent. People drink and drive and kill people. Let's make it illegal too, eh?

Drug addiction is a health issue and should be treated as that. Making drugs illegal CREATES MORE CRIME.

We could stop this madness if only people would STOP SUPPORTING THE MADNESS.

Sorry to shout, but I'm sure you're an otherwise intelligent individual, but you are failing in this subject.

[genwin]

You seem to be assuming that a war on drugs must make them illegal. It needn't. Instead the war could do whatever is most effective (per dollar spent) at reducing usage. I support rehab for alcoholics, and measures to reduce drunk driving. I don't support the war on drugs in its current form.

[dragonwriter]

> You seem to be assuming that a war on drugs must make them illegal. It needn't. Instead the war could do whatever is most effective (per dollar spent) at reducing usage.

You mean, it could be legalization, taxation, and using taxes to fund intervention, referral, and treatment programs, and not be opposed to legalization at all?

If so, then its obviously not what people supporting legalization are arguing against when they are arguing againt the War on Drugs.

[genwin]

Yes, that's consistent with my top-most comment in this thread, where I describe a different, gentler and constitutional war on drugs.

I wouldn't stop at using the taxes from the sale of hard drugs to reduce their usage. If spending $X against drug usage lead to $2X in net benefits, I'd support spending $X no matter how much higher it was than those taxes.

A key component would be rehab, in which case it might be tough to make the drug legal. Suppose crack is legal and so there's some parent high on crack all day, providing only the most basic of care for the kids. If it takes keeping crack illegal to legally force that parent into rehab, then I'd want crack to stay illegal, but change the consequence to rehab.

[shawn-furyan]

>Does making meth and crack legal make less crime (violent or robbery) than if their usage was nil?

That's not one of the available options. I mean, looking back at the article, the spoils of this program are incredibly paltry given the enormity of the data set. Criminalization of drugs and Militarization of enforcement groups is not significantly deterring usage because they are so ineffective even with so many resources and so little respect for the civil rights of users and non-users alike. All these programs have been effective at is raising the bar for drug distribution organizations to a point where militarization and violence is necessary for operation.

>Coffee addictions don't lead to more violent crime or robbery, as far as I know.

Perhaps they would if they were criminalized. There's nothing very violent about marijuana use except the militarized distribution chain and criminal enforcement apparatus. If 7-11 could sell it from behind the counter, I expect that you would see marijuana related violent deaths drop precipitously.

[genwin]

> Perhaps they would if they were criminalized.

But why would it be criminalized? For that to be justified it needs to be a drain on society in some significant way.

I don't support the current flawed war on drugs, especially forfeiture of property and imprisonment for users. I don't support a war on drugs that are essentially victimless, like on marijuana. I support the ideal war on drugs (one based on evidence to show that it does more good than harm).

[shawn-furyan]

>But why would it be criminalized? For that to be justified it needs to be a drain on society in some significant way.

Substance bans do not /at all/ have a track record of being grounded in quantifiable measures of societal harm. That is to say, the current substance restriction policies are more or less completely arbitrary. The arbitrariness of current policies gives a natural experiment opportunity to assess the harm of the criminalization policies themselves by comparing the societal impact of substances such as caffeine, tobacco/nicotine, and alcohol with those of marijuana plus the associated negative impacts of marijuana criminalization. At least in the case of marijuana, the cure seems to be significantly worse than the disease.

>I support the ideal war on drugs (one based on evidence to show that it does more good than harm).

I wrote a more generalized comment[1] on the idea of an "ideal war on drugs". The gist is that I think it's a completely fantastical idea. The idea that you can squash a market with inelastic demand is soundly dispelled by all current and historical attempts at doing so. Further, I think that it's harmful that such an idea persists, because it allows for the justification of more and more extreme enforcement measures. Arguments like "If we got rid of meth then society would be significantly improved?" are based on a false premise. This is an outcome that clearly cannot be brought about by the war on drugs, yet such reasoning is continually used as a justification for more and more extreme enforcement measures that have increasingly diminishing returns as well as an increasingly negative impact on broader society as a whole.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6324214

[genwin]

> At least in the case of marijuana, the cure seems to be significantly worse than the disease.

Agreed, I'm talking about justifying criminalization in an ideal way, not the current way.

> The idea that you can squash a market with inelastic demand is soundly dispelled by all current and historical attempts at doing so.

The demand comes after the addiction. Remove addiction and the demand is reduced.

> This is an outcome that clearly cannot be brought about by the war on drugs...

That's the current war, not the one based on evidence. What if the evidence showed that a different war could improve society on average and reduce hard drug usage? For example, instead of taking away a user's property and imprisoning them, you give them rehab and (if needed) job skills and actually find them a job, and any other assistance that costs less to provide than the monetary value of the drain on society they'd otherwise be?

[CamperBob2]

The same questions were once asked about alcohol. Did you get your answers then?

[genwin]

Apples to oranges, since unlike meth and crack users, the vast majority of those who drink alcohol can hold down a job to pay for it, instead of resort to theft or worse.

[warfangle]

Prescription opioid drugs like oxycodone kill more people than meth or crack. And there are a lot of people able to hold down a job and pay for cocaine (see also: wall street). What was your point again?

[genwin]

I'd include a lot of legal drugs in my war on drugs!

[baddox]

I really can't imagine violence going up if drug prohibition was ended, even if you don't count the violence committed by public officers enforcing drug laws.

[genwin]

I can imagine that, because a crack or meth user can't hold down a decent job. Whether legal or not they'd tend to have to rob to get the money to stay high. And when legal it's likely more people would get addicted.

[warfangle]

If you're expecting levels of drug abuse to rise with deregulation, let me just point you to ... well, everywhere that's deregulated drugs.

[genwin]

Is crack or meth legal in any modern country, after being illegal?

[baddox]

Now you're assuming both that drug abuse would increase if drug prohibition ended and that drugs wouldn't get drastically cheaper. Both are claims you would need to support, and claims I do not believe.

[genwin]

I don't think it would matter how cheap it is. Even at a dollar a hit a jobless person tends to need to steal to get that dollar, in addition to money for food.

I don't think it's a stretch to believe that legal things become more prevalent than illegal things, especially highly addictive things. Believing that requires no more support than disbelieving that.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Do you know a lot of meth users? I've known a few who held down jobs. And then there is every person who takes Adderall. Personally, I've taken Adderall for more than a decade, and found it easier to hold down a job with it than before.

[rhizome]

Coffee addictions don't lead to more violent crime or robbery, as far as I know.

You don't know at all, because it's never been illegal. However, there is plenty of evidence that making it illegal would indeed lead to robbery and violence.

[whyleyc]

Except people don't violently mug strangers in broad daylight to get their next caffeine hit ... unless you haven't scored a coffee for a long time :)

[danielsju6]

Sounds like you need to read-up on the prohibition and what making alcohol illegal did to our country.

[genwin]

It's a question of what does more harm than good. The vast majority of people who drink alcohol can still be sober at work. Whereas a crack addict will tend to be high all day, unable to work, thus needing to rob to feed their addiction.

[__alexs]

Crack is unusually addictive but many people maintain casual cocaine habits for years on end. Both of these drugs have the same classification, and the same penalties in most of the world.

Crack is also particularly bad for your health outside of just being extremely addictive. If it wasn't a Class A drug people would rapidly end up in treatment for it anyway.

Ultimately there's hardly any actual science involved in the War on Drugs, just as there wasn't during prohibition.

[genwin]

There should be evidence heavily involved in a war on drugs, on a drug by drug basis, for sure. I'd estimate the totality of the drag on society, even parenting, in determining the resources to apply to reduce the usage of that drug.

[baddox]

You're also conflating all levels of alcohol usage with crack addiction. It's possible for many people (though granted, probably nearly genetically impossible for some people) to use either without becoming addicted. And for alcoholics, it's often very hard to hold down a job.

[genwin]

It's a matter of percentages. Perhaps 5% of alcohol users have a significant problem with it, that drags down those around them. I don't know what the percentage is for crack but I bet it's over 90%, high enough that we shouldn't take a chance on the users who aren't addicted to it promoting it to the 90% who would become addicted it.

[baddox]

You're making a big assumption: that the war on drugs, even if it cost no money and ruined no lives on its own, in any way lowers the number of people addicted to hard drugs and the amount of violence related to hard drugs. While I don't have any specific data, it seems pretty obvious to me that it only increases both.

[genwin]

I do make the assumption that a war on drugs can lower the number of people addicted to hard drugs, and from there the amount of violence related to it. But that assumption includes the way I would handle it, like forcing users to be in rehab before prison is considered.

[anigbrowl]

That's nonsense. GCracks'a horrible drug, crack addicts are tedious & depressing to be around, but they're not all as dysfunctional as you suggest. The most common crime I've seen among extreme crack addicts is prostitution rather than robbery.

[genwin]

> GCracks'a horrible drug, crack addicts are tedious & depressing to be around, but they're not all as dysfunctional as you suggest.

Have you researched this, as you suggested I do, or is it just what you believe?

[whyleyc]

I didn't mention alcohol - I was talking about caffeine. Alcohol is in a class all by itself in terms of the social issues it can cause.

[pyre]

Were alcoholics robbing people for money to feed their habit during Prohibition?

[jlgreco]

Of course there were. Even today there are alcoholic bums that will mug you for booze money. You don't really think they are all crack or smack fiends, do you? Heroin withdrawal can make you wish you were dead, alcohol withdrawal can make you dead.

More troubling however is community-consuming gang violence. The sort that we see today and the sort that we saw during prohibition.

[genwin]

> Of course there were.

Safe to assume a very small percentage of alcohol users, which makes the difference here. Safe to assume that during Prohibition the vast majority of alcohol users could have been sober during working hours to pay for it.

[PavlovsCat]

That's because caffeine is legal and therefore dirt cheap.

[whyleyc]

No, it's because as a stimulant it has a combination of relatively low addictive properties and is easy to withdraw from when compared to more "hardcore" substances [1]

[1] http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm

[jlgreco]

All of those things, except "stimulant" technically, can be said of pot too. Hell, caffeine is physically addictive (not to even get into the lifestyles you can build around it that lead to less 'medical' forms of addiction...) while pot is not.

You ever caffeine withdrawal? Yeah, during that week-long vacation last year when you stopped going to Starbucks every morning. Most of us have gone through that; it is a bitch and lasts longer than most hangovers.

You ever get pot withdrawal? Yeah, me neither.

Whatever, lets say for the sake of argument that pot and caffeine are on par with each other despite the obvious discrepancies. It is undeniable that pot prohibition is harmful to society; why would caffeine prohibition not be?

[dllthomas]

I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing for continued criminalization of marijuana.

[baddox]

How about nicotine? Granted, there have probably been people who steal cigarettes are steal other things to buy cigarettes, but I think it's a much smaller problem than with illegal drugs.

[jlgreco]

If COPS is representative of real life, there are plenty of people willing to rob convenience stores of cigarettes. I have little doubt that this would turn much uglier if nicotine was banned.

[shawn-furyan]

I've worked in an in an institution where cigarettes were prohibited for certain patients and not for others. Cigarette theft was very, very common.

[genwin]

If crack was dirt cheap, people would still rob to get the money for it, because they couldn't hold down a decent job while using it.

[ahoy]

People hold down professional, successful, white-collar careers for YEARS while doing cocaine. If it was legal why would anyone do crack?

[baddox]

If it was legal, it would probably be vastly safer to acquire and use recreationally, so even if the amount of use stayed the same, the actual negative effects would probably decrease.

[chimeracoder]

That's simply not true.

I don't have any stats for crack cocaine, but look up the effectiveness of diacetylmorphine maintenance programs in Switzerland and the UK - these are government-run programs in which heroin users are given access to pure, unadulterated heroin so that they can have steady day jobs.

Spoiler: These programs have been proven time and again to be effective in reducing crime.

Crack cocaine is biochemically identical to powder cocaine (the main difference is the means of ingestion, not the chemical compound). And I can assure you that many cocaine users hold very steady, very high-paying jobs (in certain industries more than others).

[genwin]

If the percentage of crack users who could both hold a steady job to pay for their addiction and also not significantly drag down those around them was > 90% (e.g. workplace accidents, parenting), then I could support ending the war on crack.

[PavlovsCat]

There are many factors that go into this, sure.

One of them is the drug itself, and since I am not familiar with crack (thank god), I would consider alcohol a good example. It's legal, "dirt cheap", and can utterly destroy lives with a completeness few drugs seem to be able to match. Everybody knows what alcohol can do, yet it still happens a lot (to put it mildly). So yes, making stuff legal and having information instead of disinformation is not a magical solution.

But that doesn't mean illegality and misinformation cannot make things even worse. Legality does affect price and safety, I think it's very hard to deny this or show otherwise (feel free to try). If a dealer sells rat poison instead of Ecstasy, it's not like the buyers can go to the cops about it, for example... and I'm not saying Ecstasy if safe no matter how it's used, I'm saying rat poison is harmful in all cases. And dealers are operating in the underground anyway, so they have little reason to care about adding on top of that. I'm not sure about "gateway drugs", but I am pretty sure about "gateway criminality" being a real thing, and it also applies to addicts, not just dealers.

[tsotha]

>But otherwise I don't have a problem with a war on meth or crack or other drugs that increase the odds that I'll be a victim of violent crime or robbery.

Why do you assume this? Do you think people so inclined have any trouble getting "meth or crack or other drugs"? Prohibition only raises the price, and I could make the argument that just means addicts have to rob people more often before they start having medical problems.

[baddox]

Prohibition does more than just raise price. It also increases the incentive for dealers to get people addicted to drugs. It also immediately makes anyone involved a criminal, so there can be little conflict resolution outside of direct violence. It also prevents enterprises which desire to stay legal from getting involved in the production and distribution of drugs, which leads to more dangerous (and probably less enjoyable) drugs.

[dragonwriter]

> But otherwise I don't have a problem with a war on meth or crack or other drugs that increase the odds that I'll be a victim of violent crime or robbery.

Why do you think that the war being fought on those drugs isn't reducing the risk of you being a victim of violent crime or robbery? Or do you just assume that the existence of those drugs create a risk which justifies the war, even if the war makes that risk even greater?

[Gormo]

> I have a problem with ... violating the Constitution during the war on drugs

But what's the constitutional justification for having any war on drugs in the first place? Alcohol prohibition took a constitutional amendment, and that's been repealed.

[baddox]

Would you be okay with a war on drugs funded only by the people who, like yourself, desire a war on drugs?

[genwin]

No, things that benefit society at large should be funded by society at large. I support a war on drugs only when it's constitutional and benefits society, doing more good than harm including its cost.

[baddox]

I'd like to see the argument that the war on drugs does more good than harm, even ignoring the financial cost. When considering the financial cost, I find it hard to imagine any remotely reasonable argument that it's beneficial to society.